The Dodd-Frank finance bill which was touted as solving all the problems of modern evil capitalism, includes a proviso that demands that every corporation publish the differential between the CEO's and other HCI's (Highly compensated Individuals), and the lowest paid in the company. This presumably will embarrass the CEO's and enrage the proletariat to the point that either the proles get paid more like the bosses, or vice versa.

What do you bet, it won't cover Senators, Representatives, High-end bureaucrats and the like, and the Politicos compensation won't include the various forms of graft that go with the office.

Found a replacement for the old 83 V-65 Magna: The 84 Honda V65 Sabre.This one isn't mine, but is a dead ringer, color and all. The old bike is now a spare parts collection, it having the same engine, and many other parts in common. Or maybe someone out there wants a rocket ship project bike. The old bike goes like Jack-the-Bear, but really needs a new frame to replace the one the previous owner before me bent, just enough to eventually bring on widespread cracking. Can it be ridden? Yes. I rode it to work today. Should it be ridden? Probably not. Helps if you have a welding machine.

Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is not. Here in Colorado, the Governor, a Democrat short on money, added a surcharge to all vehicle registration that roughly doubled the annual price of a license plate. That not bringing in enough money, he also got a "fee" of $25/month tacked on if you renew your plates late, which mercifully tops out at $100, otherwise the tax liability for the old Ford you found in grandpas barn would bankrupt you.

My daughter has a small motorcycle. She recently found herself in hard times, and let the registration lapse. Now she wants to ride the bike again, but renewing the plates would run about $160. Solution: She gives me the bike. Transfer the title is $60, same as renewing the plates, if you had done it on time. I insure the bike, list her as the rider, she pays me for the insurance, and all is good.

Presumably, next year about this time, I'll give the bike back to her.

BTW: The license surcharge applies to anything with a license plate, like your boat trailer, or one of my guns. Yes, one of them has a license plate. The late fee also applies across the board, so if you find yourself facing hard times, and put your toys into storage, remember there's a $100 fee to get them out.

Hopefully, by January, Colorado will no longer be a Blue state, and some or all of this legislated theft can be done away with, although Tom Tancredo seems to like it well enough to insure it stays.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

On a national level at least. In a right-wing dictatorship, if a dissent movement gets big enough to draw attention, the leadership is identified, charged with something disgusting, and sent off to jail, if they're lucky. If not, they just disappear.

In a left-wing dictatorship, if a dissent movement starts to draw attention, the army is sent to the home town of the leadership, and the entire town is loaded onto the trucks and trains, and shipped off to the re-education camps, from which only a very small percentage "graduate". The whole operation is front-page news, under the headline "Rebellion Crushed", noting that everyone else can now safely go back to work.

In this country, it's much more refined. Under a right-wing dictator, say Richard Nixon, dissenters are investigated by the IRS until they are convicted of something ot are proven broke. Under a leftist dictatorship, the EPA is the agency of choice as it can threaten to shut down all the oil refineries in Texas, the entire timber industry in Missouri, all Gulf cleanup operations in Louisiana, all off shore drilling anywhere, and most on-shore drilling.

The latest effort is a proposal to ban all lead in firearms ammunition. And people had thought the administration was afraid to take on the gun lobby. They simply needed to find the right dog to sic on them.

Michael Gerson asks three questions of Tea Partiers, and since I, at least sympathize with them, I'll have a shot at answering them.

First, do you believe that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional?

He goes on to describe the chaos that would ensue if these programs were summarily shut down without further ado. As it happens, I do think those programs are unconstitutional, but having sucked a large number of people into them, the government owes us an orderly withdrawal from them. You don't throw grandma out on the street, but you inform the twenty-somethings that their retirement will be personally owned and self-managed from here on out. Some sort of gradation can certainly be worked out.

A second question of tea party candidates: Do you believe that American identity is undermined by immigration?

Notice that the word "illegal" is conspicuous by its absence. In the La-La land of cultural equivalence, a bone in the nose is as good as a walk on the moon. In the real world, there are cultures that condone lying, cheating, theft, rape, murder, and the rest, but this isn't one of them. You want to come here, you take a number and play by the local rules.

Question three: Do you believe that gun rights are relevant to the health care debate?

If the government can compel you to buy insurance, it can compel you to buy a Chevrolet, or forbid you from buying a Ford or a Smith and Wesson. It's none of their business, that's how it's relevant.

First off let me enthusiastically recommend P.J. O'Rourke's book Holidays in Hell. Read this and many things about many strange places will become much clearer.

Go here for his take on Afghanistan. He's been there before, and points out that the entire country is based on shopping. Sort of. The major land trade routes between Europe, China, and India cross there, and the Afghans feel this rates them at least a percentage of the action. That said, he now draws paralells:

What if some friendly, well-meaning, but very foreign power, with incomprehensible lingo and outrageous clothes, were to arrive on our shores to set things right? What if it were Highland Scots? There they go marching around wearing skirts and purses and ugly plaids, playing their hideous bagpipe music, handing out haggis to our kiddies and offending our sensibilities with a lack of BVDs under their kilts. Maybe they do cut taxes, lower the federal deficit, eliminate the Department of Health and Human Services, and the EPA, give people jobs at their tartan factories and launch a manhunt for Harry Reid and the UC Berkeley faculty. We still wouldn’t like them.

No one likes it when some furreners show up and try to run your country, but if they threw in some public hangings to emphasize the above agenda, I might be inclined not to complain too loudly

Monday, August 23, 2010

When a politician talks about percentages, the real story is in the actual numbers, and vice versa.I have mentioned this before, I believe, but here's another example. Remember when "Bushes war in Iraq" was responsible for most of the federal deficit? Somewhere in the range of 75-80% of it in 2007. But lookey! Thanks to the divine guidance of the Lightworker, the Iraq war is now down to something near only 10% of the deficit.Got that part of the deficit under control, don't we?

Found this tidbit over on Reason TV, in which a Professional shrink has researched psychopathic murderers, and discovered some common characteristics:

He also notes that libertarian folks, even with two out of three of the flags, don't become serial-type murderers, even though the temptations are certainly there.

I note that the average gun owner tends to be quite conservative, with a libertarian streak.

I also note that the average serial killer seems to be a liberal with a strong sense of entitlement, and frustration at not getting his due.

Disclosure: D'wife is a psychology major. From observing her coursework, I have concluded that psychology is what the application of statistics can do for ordinary witch doctory, and that anything coming from the field should be approached with the sort of caution usually reserved for venomous snakes and alligators.

Still, the argument is as valid as anything the antis have come up with, and Mr. Fallon obviously needs to do more research (job security). Going to the Dean of a liberal (U.C. Irvine) university and asking for funding and tenure to study why liberals are inherently psychopathic mass murderers, and Republicans are the only people who can actually be trusted with firearms might be a hard sell. Some thought obviously needs to go into the wording of the title on the fund request.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Under Islamic law, since his father was Muslim, he is a Muslim. He says he is a Christian. Under Islamic law, that would be apostasy, which is punishable by death. Any Muslim who kills him will win a ticket to Heaven.

Of course he could be lying. This is not only condoned, but required of a Muslim if it furthers the cause of Islam. So if he's telling the truth, he should be killed, but it's O.K. if he's lying.

Keep this thought process in mind the next time you hear someone propose lasting agreements of peace, love, and dope with the Ummah.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The 2010 Kinetic Sculpture Race is to be held at Union Reservoir, August 28th this year. Of course this notice is probably coming a bit late for anyone to actually build a sculpture for the contest, but plan on showing up, and get inspired for next year.Here's an example of what you need to finish well. Previous Kinetic challenges were held at the end of June, so the warm-up events were held at the end of winter, or at least we hoped winter was about over.

Bikini babes for the men, buff men in swimsuits for the ladies, and beer for all. I'll be shooting the start gun.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Almost nobody will argue that the enemy is at the gates anymore, the main differences come down to which side of the gates the enemy is on. The Democratic Socialists of America, for example, now claim some 70 members of congress including chairmen of about half the committees. Gateway Pundit has posted the membership list from the DSA's website.

But wait, there's more! You have to know how to ask the question in order to get the right answer, and have it make sense, so go here, and check out the 83 or so listed members of the congressional Progressive Caucus. You'll find a generous amount of overlap, and several new names as well. Jared Polis of Colorado, for example is a member.

A Progressive is a Communist or Socialist who doesn't want to alarm the capitalists by admitting anything. Taking the original 70 names, and adding the overlapping list from the Progressives adds 2 more Senators, and 15 more Representatives to bring the total to 87.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

I didn't see anyone win or lose that I didn't expect to see finish that way, although some of the results were closer than I had expected. Just remember Billlls law of election year rhetoric: If the numbers are getting reported, the real story in in the percentages, and vice versa. I think the story from the primaries is in the numbers.

Rounding off the numbers, in the Democrat Senate primary, a total of some 337,000 Donks turned out. They gave "Obamas man" the nod over "Clintons man", and this is being touted as a huge win for the Bamster. Bennet did little, and Romanoff went harshly negative early on. What's to like?

On the Republican side, some 405,000 Reps voted in the Senate contest, picking the conservative over the RINO. This represents a 20% increase in head count over the Donks. If I were to bet, I'd say it's the Reps election to lose, which they certainly can. They don't call it the Stupid party for nothing.

The Reps had 386,000 voters register their choice for Governor, which is 14% higher than the Dem turnout for Senate, the Dems not having a primary fight for governor. This means that Dan Maes and Tom Tancredo will share 57% of the vote for governor, and John Hickenlooper will snooze to victory with 43%. They don't call it the Stupid party for nothing.

June’s trade deficit swelled 18.8% to $49.9 billion, the highest since October 2008. That was much worse than Wall Street predicted — or what the Commerce Department estimated in the recent Q2 GDP report. The new report, along with recent inventory data, suggest Commerce will revise down Q2 economic growth from the already-sluggish 2.4% annual rate to about 1%, according to Action Economics. Action Economics is looking for stronger retail inventory figures later this week that would imply a 1.4% GDP pace.

I'm batting .500 which suggests I should be getting a positively obscene paycheck from some Wall St. money company.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

I declared war on them early this spring. Now look, the tree rats have formed a liberation front or something.Theo Spark is having a caption contest over there with this picture. Drop on over and submit one.

Monday, August 9, 2010

As some of you may remember, I took up a project, tilting at windmills, trying to get the HOV lane designation on a local road abolished, as it seemed to do nothing but increase pollution and congestion. I even did a survey of the traffic.

O.K. the survey is done, the numbers crunched, and the answer is conveniently hidden somewhere else. For 38 winter days and 49 summer days I have driven the Sante Fe corridor. North in the morning, and South in the evening, thus subject to the HOV rules both ways. In winter I drive a pickup, so I’m banished to the #2 or #3 lanes, but come summer, I become a paragon of greenie virtue on my motorcycle, and am allowed in with the privileged few who can carpool to work.

Some stats here: The complete corridor is 7.1 miles from Bowles to Alameda. I use 4.6 miles of this roughly out of the middle. I carried a stopwatch, and counted the cars in the adjacent lanes, when practical. I also kept track on the traffic in my own lane when that was practical.

When driving in the HOV lane, it was not at all uncommon to pass 200 vehicles in the other two lanes on the 4.6 mile section I used. Approaching an intersection north bound, I pass some 100 vehicles in the 2 and 3 lanes, and note that on average there are 4-5 vehicles in the HOV lane for a usage rate of 4-5%. Southbound there may be twice as many vehicles in the HOV lane, but 120 vehicles in the other two. Southbound usage appears to be in the 8-10% range. Average speeds northbound are 28.9mph in the 2 and 3 lanes, and 37.8 in the HOV lane, so the 95% of you who do not carpool are forced to burn some 30% more fuel over the same distance. Southbound the advantage of the carpool is reduced as traffic is heavier. HOV traffic makes 25 mph and the car poolers make 30.6, so the unfortunate 90% are burning 22% more gas.

Sante Fe is six lanes wide, 3 in each direction, for its entire length, except for a short stretch where its 10 lanes wide, intersecting the Interstate. At this point, it’s pretty obvious that the HOV lane is a major contributor to congestion and air pollution by bottle-necking a seriously busy street at peak demand hours, so why do it? The answer lies in Washington. Every year we, the citizenry of Colorado send oodles of bucks to Washington in the form of federal taxes. This money is then apportioned to the various departments of Whatever in proportion to the importance attached to them by the congress. The various departments then filter their swag through their own kidneys, then trickle the remainder back to the states, roughly in proportion to the amount they sent in the first place.

In order to justify their high-paying jobs however, the mandarins of the Departments demand a certain amount of butt-kissing from the peasants in the hinterlands. To this end, the Colorado Department of Transportation prepares a scripted report, describing all the wonderful things it does with the money to reduce pollution and congestion in the state, and humbly asks for our money back to continue doing these good deeds. The thinking in Washington is that the public would be best served if the peasants would simply quit driving and use public transportation so the bureaucrats could get from meeting to junket unimpeded, so approximately half of the funds have to be promised over to trolley cars, HOV lanes, buses and the like in order to get what’s left to use to fix up the roads.

CDOT has a survey, done right after the widening of Sante Fe from 4 lanes to 6 was completed, that showed high usage on the HOV lane mostly from the buses running along it. In fact, the bus usage was promised by RTD in order to justify the project to Washington since they got a cut to build their trolley system. Shortly after the project was completed, the Bus company, who also is the Trolley company, opened the trolley line along Sante Fe, built at approximately the same cost as building another 6-lane highway along the same route, and canceled all the bus routes on Sante Fe. This was done to improve the ridership on the trolley line, which would have been light due to the high fares charged. This left the HOV lane nearly empty, but the old report is repeated every year in order to keep the funding coming.

So there you have it. The HOV lane serves almost nobody on the road, but provides a convenient fiction to keep the pennies falling from Washington back here where they came from. Dropping the references from the report would allow us to abolish the HOV lane, but CDOT would then have to come up with another marginally plausible reason why the money would be at least 50% wasted on “green” projects. Meantime the congestion and pollution will be with us forever. Yet again, the windmills win.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

I am informed that August 16th is National Rum Day. Rum being my spirit of choice,I thoroughly approve. Of course they could be making the whole thing up in a sleazy effort to sell more rum, but why take chances.

Had a discussion with a friend once who favored whiskeys. Knowing nothing of single malts at the time, I opined that whiskeys were a coarse drink, best added to coffee with a generous dollop of cream and sugar. He replied that Rum was a legalized method of selling the public the lowest form of rotgut moonshine, and we both realized that something was wrong with these pictures.

He introduced me to single malts, which were quite tasty, for the most part, if annoyingly expensive, and I explained that white rum was, in fact rotgut moonshine.Rum should be brown in color, the darker the better.Look for the word "Anjeo" on the label. This indicates it's been decently aged.Look for words like "flavored" and "spiced" on the label, and leave these on the shelf, unless you're under 21. Good booze is wasted on youth.Recognizable flavors in rum should include brown sugar, and maybe vanilla. Flavors like this tell you you're drinking REAL rum, much like the flavors of peat and iodine tell you you're drinking top-shelf single malt.

The comments in the above post (advertisement?) mention Bardinet Negrita and Cruzan Black Strap. Never tried, or even seen either one. Further research is indicated.

Went to the club steel challenge Saturday, and proved that I'm 1) very slow, and 2) not getting much faster. I need more practice with the C-Z for sure.Interesting note was the two newbies, Kai and Jasmine, from Taiwan. They were introduced to shooting by our club president about a month ago, and took to it like naturals. They now own two Ruger .22s, a 9mm, and a .45 auto, and are shopping for an AR pattern rifle. Their friends and relatives back in the old country, where firearms are forbidden, are properly mortified.

Took the Hi Point to test the improved scope mounts and discovered that I can now put nearly all the holes into a 3x5 card at 100 yards. That's probably as good as it's going to get, but that's certainly good enough for a fun plinker.About that scope. My original thought was that a 1-4 shotgun scope would be about right. Took my gift certificate, and went shopping at Cheaper Than Dirt. Yes, they have such a scope. But for $10 more, I can get a 1.5-6 scope, with a big 44mm objective, red AND green illumination, which I'll probably never use, and lens covers. Sweet. So I'll spring the extra 10 and get the bells and whistles. The thing gets here, and ZOMG! the thing is nearly as big as the gun. Got nice eye relief, and nice sharp image, though, and the combo looks nasty enough to cause Sarah Brady to foul her britches at 40 paces. Pictures shortly.

The gun show is still sparsely attended. I blame the Obama recovery. Apparently the nouveau riche government employees tend not to be gunnies.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Just imagine this thing equipped with a modest motor. I visualize two motorcycle front wheels in back, and the speed rather limited by the clever airless front wheel. Handling may also be limited by the flat cross-section of the front wheel, but hey, that's why they have municipal parades, no?

This months e-postal match is over at Curtis Lowe's. I like shooting the wily wild bowling pin, so here's a chance to do it for fun, bragging rights, and of course, a shot at a $50 gift certificate from Cheaper Than Dirt.

Did I mention that I actually got the gift certificate a couple months ago? Well I did, and I turned it into a nice 1-6 scout scope for the Hi Point, so it's now not just an Evil Black Rifle, it's an EVIL BLACK SNIPER RIFLE, albeit with a practical range limit of some 200 yards. More on that as soon as I work out the quirks of getting the thing properly mounted.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

V.P. Biden says the Dems will surprise and amaze everybody this fall with their performance in the elections. He may be right. Just not the way he thinks. (He thinks? Who knew?)Anyway, another congressanimal is out of a job, and November is still 3 months out. The WSJ reports:

Sunday, August 1, 2010

In order to get elected to political office, you need to be smart, qualified, or at least, a member of a party other than that of the incumbent. Sure enough, John Hickenlooper, a reliable liberal, and mayor of the Sovereign Nation of Denver, is currently sitting on 44% in the latest poll.

Recipe for defeat, no?

No. When you're running against the Stupid party, victory can always be snatched from the jaws of otherwise sure defeat. Not only can they be counted on to produce a couple of relatively weak candidates, but the smell of victory attracts the buzzards as well. The rest of the poll shows either of the Republicans splitting the conservative 55% more or less equally with Tom Tancredo, who is running as a Constitutionalist.

If I was Hickenlooper, I'd have my staff working on ways to quietly and untraceably transfer money to whichever of my opponents looked like he needed it the most.